![]() Debris is brushed off and a rubber sled is dragged to complete the treatment. Where a track for slick tyres may be lucky to get hand sprayed a few times during an event, at South Georgia Motorsport Park there is a complete spray from the start line to the finish line between every class, and sometimes more during RvW. ![]() The track preparation required for modern radial beasts is otherworldly – and time consuming. “We had a lot of valve spring issues that we sorted out in Orlando and we made a string of test runs with sub-1sec 60-foot times. “We turned it down heaps and we still spun,” a disappointed Wood said. The new DXP Street class aimed to provide a heads-up class to suit budget racers, and also offered a $2500 wheelstand bounty – producing spectacular results. That left Wood with just one shot to make the RvW field in his fresh Noonan Hemi-powered Corvette, but when he spun the tyres shortly after launching the dream was over. Two qualifying sessions were originally scheduled for Friday, but the schedule moved at a glacial pace due to track prep and oil-downs. After spending the early part of the event still testing in Orlando, he made the drive to Georgia on Thursday, but the storm beat him to the track. Not least among those was Australia’s Jarrod Wood. We saw how well the Noonan was working with the Pro Mod teams we could bolt it down and know we were going to make good power.” “It has stock front suspension, stock firewall, stock floorpans and Mustang Fox-body rear suspension. Jordan Lasik’s X275 Chevy Nova has a bit of a Pro Street-style appearance and comes packed with a Noonan Hemi. The sub-sea level density altitude readings created a power headache for racers, too. That presented a challenge to the track prep team on Friday as they attempted to pull the moisture from the cold racing surface. Two sessions of RvW were completed early in the week before a thousand-mile-long storm front swept through the American south on Thursday afternoon, dragging cold Arctic air behind it. The 11th running of Lights Out faced a meteorological challenge, with at least two days of predicted rainfall, including Sunday’s eliminations. ![]() Going into the event, the record was 3.546 seconds, held by Stevie ‘Fast’ Jackson.ĭaniel Pierce’s popular diesel Cummins-powered Nova looked good early in X275, but later got into the wall in a big way, crunching up the front end. What began as Pro Street cars on radials is now all about purpose-built Pro Mod chassis running an assortment of screw-supercharged, turbocharged and nitrous combinations. Nitrous combinations such as Jamie Hancock’s were under-represented in RvW this year, with screw-supercharged cars piling on instead.Įvery good cult needs a reason to belong, and the stars of this show are to be found in Radial v The World (RvW). Long will do whatever it takes to keep his races front of mind, and he steps on plenty of toes to do so. His stream-of-consciousness Facebook live videos are an unpredictable mix of racer gossip, industry commentary and controversy, as seen this year with a swipe at the local police department over harassment and dangerous driving. He wasn’t the first to run radial-tyre races, but he was the one to bring Don King-style flair to the promotion. All I saw was a big fireball.”Īnd then there’s the cult’s enigmatic leader – Florida’s Donald Long. I’m guessing it had some kind of ignition glitch. “It spat all eight sparkplugs out of the motor, torched the heads and the pistons are bad. “We’ve run this motor for two years and I have never had this issue,” he said. Justin ‘Lil Country’ Swanstrom had a weekend he’d rather forget, his Pro 275 nitrous Camaro blowing the motor during qualifying. There’s fear of the outside: The traditional mode of going fast – the bias-ply slick tyre – is mocked, derided and excommunicated, its merits not even permitted to be discussed. Lights Out goes so far as to schedule more qualifying rounds than necessary (when timing allows) to give racers the most chances possible of making headlines. Each February, barrier-breaking bursts on the eighth-mile aren’t hoped for, they are expected. Here, followers drink the world-record Kool-Aid. Of those, Lights Out is by far the biggest. Three times a year, thousands of devotees of the stiff-sidewall rubber make a pilgrimage to the tiny town of Cecil, Georgia, for a set of races that are equal parts thrilling, brain-numbing and mystifying. RADIAL-tyre drag racing might just be a cult – and if it is, South Georgia Motorsport Park (SGMP) is its Jonestown.
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